The Unclimbed China Expedition

Four cloudy, rainy days later we arrived where we thought base camp should be. A thick, pea soup fog that had lasted for 2 days made our exact whereabouts a bit of a mystery. Even the locals were unsure of exactly where our peaks were. We just had to trust our navigation and GPS, both based on a map of dubious accuracy, and dump our mounds of equipment in the likeliest-looking place!

Two days later we woke to our first clear morning, and we charged up the ridge behind camp like excited schoolboys to try and get a first view of "our peaks." Walking in the oxygen-depleted air had us puffing and panting, but cresting the ridge was an incredible moment. There at the head of the valley, hanging in the deep blue sky, were Longemain and Daddomain. We felt waves of elation and relief. These two beautiful peaks were worth all the hassle and uncertainly. Above all, there appeared to be challenging but feasible routes on both mountains.

Over the next week, we started the hard work of acclimatizing to altitude, and exploring and establishing a route on Longemain. We set up an advanced base camp (ABC) at 4,700 m under the icefall of Longemain's western glacier, where a closer view of enormous ice cliffs and the difficulty of the icefall caused us to refocus on a route onto the west ridge, rather than our original plan of trying to get to the col between Longemain and Daddomain.

From ABC the route took us up a long, avalanche-prone couloir that we named "Purgatory Gully." Deep, unconsolidated snow conspired with our unacclimatized bodies to make desperately hard work of this crucial part of the plan. Every afternoon so far, storms had rolled out of the west, dumping new snow and often pounding the valleys with thunder and lightning. This meant that any footsteps we left were destroyed by the resulting avalanches that swept the gully. Every time we climbed the gully anew, soul-destroying steps had to be re-plugged.

The first time we reached the ridge crest was in a full storm, and as we groped around for somewhere to call home both of us were hit by lightning! There was nowhere to hide, and it was a very nervous pair that spent the first night at a snowed-in Camp 1 (C1). A short foray up the ridge the next day pushed our acclimatization envelope, and we headed down to base camp for a couple days of R&R and Jo's birthday.

Three days later we headed back up to ABC, suffered our way up Purgatory Gully, and reached C1, where we dug a welcome, lightning-proof snow cave! Weather saw us still there the next day, but then we had a wonderful day climbing, with big packs, up the sinuous, exposed ridge above the camp. This took us to the top of a subsidiary peak that had so far dominated our world. Another snow cave saw us set for a summit attempt the next day. Trying to climb in as "pure" and lightweight a style as possible means attempting to minimize the up and down, acclimatizing, and load carrying often associated with larger, more traditional expeditions.